


Defiance

by the_blue_fairie



Category: Frozen (Disney Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:02:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25774045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_blue_fairie/pseuds/the_blue_fairie
Summary: It is Iduna's wedding day.
Relationships: Agnarr/Iduna (Disney)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 5





	Defiance

_Put on a show…_

Iduna did not marry among her people.

_Make one wrong move_

She married in a royal chapel, high walls towering over her, surrounding her, funeral-narrow, coffin-narrow.

_And everyone will know_

Light shone from above, light through the ornate windows – the same light that daubed her cheek with ruddy flush in the forest’s gold, but filtered –

Filtered into angel-beams, the angel-beams of the carven angels of kings, distorted into church-blessing, let in to bathe the ceremony in its light, but let in within limits, let in as long as it could be controlled, and then proclaimed by hypocritical lips a beacon, a beacon and a blessing…

Hypocritical lips that spoke over her… Hypocritical lips? Who was hypocrite but she? And yet she was not hypocrite – not now, not in this moment, in this feeling…

(When Agnarr smiled at her, his face was like the sunlight, but not the sunlight circumscribed by chapel windows, chapel walls – like the sunlight’s sprawl upon the Forest…)

…but in this place…

In this moment, in this feeling, she was true to herself and him she loved – but the distortion of the light was not of her, it was imposed upon her, but it had to be of her, had to be her, had to be her, had to be her…

The light was of her. She was a daughter of the People of the Sun. The circumscription could be of her too. She would not kill the light, only confine it. The light upon the chapel floor was not lifeless – it danced with an exuberance, its little square of brilliance bristling…

Little square.

Boxed in.

Bound.

Not blotted out, no, but allowed to exist within other forces’ control.

But bristling restlessly.

She danced in Agnarr’s arms in her wedding gown of white, king’s-angels’-white in a way that blurred and bled (which king? the one in her arms? or one among his forebears, one who built this chapel, who first caught the light in thoughts of angels, caught it and confined it? _she_ was a king’s angel, but not of the kind printed in biblical illustration, painted into stained glass – not abstract, not an idea – she was an angel to Agnarr because of her life, because of the sun’s fire in her, the unconfinable light that pulsed in her, because of her, her, her…)

But what was she but an idea?

She who could not tell, could not speak but who spoke, spoke within limits she set for herself…

For herself? _She_ set them?

She danced furiously in her husband’s arms, bristling like the square of light upon the chapel floor, like the fire spirit’s flames in hues of purple, purple like the cloth adorning the breasts of kings but truer, as though the bristle might burn to a blaze – walls around her collapsing – letting in the sun in a flood to quell the fire – not fire meeting fire, not light as a flood, not any idea or abstraction that subtle tongues can shape, but like itself, the sun.

People of the Sun.

She.

Lost and last.

Last here, lone here, alone here.

And as she danced, she brought forth certain flourishes that only her people knew – flourishes that felt not exotic to onlookers but charmingly reckless, flourishes that slipped by them, that were not for them but for her. Her.

Her.

In remembrance. In defiance.

The fire that bristles burns out and dies.

The sunlight circumscribed is blotted out in one form or another, blocked by shadowed figures rising to sing in angel-chorus, lost and forgotten to the flock of wedding guests…

She would not kill the light but would kill it just the same – but it would not be her hands, not her limbs…

Like Karen in the fairy tale by the Danish author, she would harm herself but it would not be of her own free will, the hewing of her feet, the blood sure to come – no matter the moral.

When she killed the light in her, when she turned her hands on her own neck to strangle herself, her fingers would close tightly, but in their grip would be the fierceness of Karen’s scream to the executioner, the fierceness of futility…

_“Come out, come out! I cannot come in, for I must dance.”_

_Must._

Not of her own will…

Circumscription _is_ death.

No equivocation. No survival’s guile.

But death would not come today.

Today, she danced in inversion of the fairy tale, in repudiation of its framing, in repudiation of its humility and contrition.

_“The bright warm sunshine streamed through the window into the pew where Karen sat, and her heart became so filled with it, so filled with peace and joy, that it broke. Her soul flew on the sunbeams to Heaven, and no one was there who asked after the Red Shoes.”_

The sunlight that spilled into Karen’s heart was angel’s light, bled and drained to the whiteness of shame’s purity.

There is no purity in shame.

The sunlight in Iduna’s heart shone with the spirits’ fire, glided on the spirits’ winds, flashed on the waters that rose like a mane, not to drown it – not to drown her – but even if those waters swept over her, they would be familiar waters and such a death like coming home – bathing the earth in its radiance, the earth with its crags like the yawning jaw of a sleeping giant.

She would die of survival in time, a slow and strangling death like choking yourself when your fingers can’t manage it, your will can’t manage it…

…but today, into her wedding dance, she wove her defiance.


End file.
